


looking at the changing skyline

by neukolln



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Bittersweet, Developing Relationship, M/M, New York City, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 09:39:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2846399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neukolln/pseuds/neukolln
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s so very novel for them, so far from their hurried kisses in an empty dressing room, their hasty nights in shared hotel rooms. </p><p>Retirement fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	looking at the changing skyline

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bastiansbabe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bastiansbabe/gifts).



> Written for the Schweinski Fic Exchange 2k14 for the prompt "after retirement." Happy holidays, gift recipient! I hope this is something (anything) like what you were looking for. :) :) :) 
> 
> Unbetaed so please excuse any errors if you find them. Title inspired by slash stolen off an M83 lyric.

* * *

 

 

 

Basti appears before Lukas expects him to.  
  
He emerges, travel-weary and bleary-eyed, from the sliding doors separating the travelers from the anxiously awaiting at the international arrivals terminal. His gaze flits over the crowd and finds Lukas’ unsurprisingly swiftly.  
  
The half a chocolate muffin Lukas just popped into his mouth gets in the way of his smile.  
  
“That was fast,” he says as a form of greeting when Basti has made his way over to the bench he’s lounging on. He licks away the traces of chocolate from his lips and looks up at Basti.  
  
“I travel first class,” Basti explains and Lukas snorts disbelievingly. “Get the hell up and greet me properly,” Basti adds with exasperation. He knocks his knee into Lukas' ungently.  
  
Lukas stands and Basti’s come so close to the row of benches that their noses almost touch.  
  
“What’s proper?” Lukas asks, grins.  
  
Basti huffs and pushes his nose into Lukas' cheek. Lukas feels his responding smile against his skin as their hug tightens. Like it does every time, his thudding heart reminds him that there are things he forgot about Basti that a measly phone couldn’t communicate. He grips the collar of Basti’s shirt and drags it away from his neck by a few inches before he realizes what he’s doing.  
  
Basti pulls away from him before he can get any further, though. His eyes are knowing.  
  
“Later,” he says with a hint of a smirk on his mouth and Lukas' ribcage fills with heat because yes, they still go back and forth on the forthrightness, but they’ve never been this candid this soon after reuniting. And they never promise.  
  
“Unemployment has changed you,” he says, not bothering to hide the unsteadiness in his fingers as he rights Basti’s collar. He tries to remember the last time he saw Basti in something other than official team attire but he can’t and it’s jarring. What they’re doing here is outside their bounds.  
  
“Retirement,” corrects Basti grumpily. He drops his hands from Lukas' sides. “And no, it hasn’t.”  
  
Lukas pecks him on the mouth before he can say anything about it because he wants to, because fuck it.  
  
“Come on,” he says to Basti’s hilariously wide-eyed face, then grabs his duffel bag, “you’re here to forget about that.”  
  
“You can’t just do that,” Basti says. He doesn’t sound like he means it at all. He sounds reverent.  
  
“You know I don’t like it when you sulk,” Lukas replies with a big grin over his shoulder as he heads toward the exit.  
  
\-    
  
“So, is New York cold then?” asks Basti, peering outside the window of the elevator taking them up to the parking garage, thinly veiled trepidation in the creases of his forehead.  
  
They’re standing side by side, their shoulders just touching. Lukas studies Basti’s profile, the lines of his features that hardened for a while before they softened again. After their win. (After _them,_ he likes to think). He suppresses the urge to make a joke about cold weather and aging. Instead, he says,  
  
“Colder today than it’s been these last few days, I think. Is that knee going to be okay?”  
  
Because he’s changed too, a little, and his worry for Basti is no longer something he keeps under his skin.  
  
Basti turns to smile at him and it’s stunningly bright and equally as melancholy.  
  
“It’s already hurting like a bitch,” he responds.  
  
Lukas has to stop himself from leaning in and kissing him. Like maybe the words won’t feel as devastating if he kisses them away.  
  
“This wouldn’t be a problem if you’d just take the meds your doctors prescribe,” he instead says with a knot in his stomach.  
  
“Lukas,” says Basti, amused. He curls his fingers around Lukas' wrist like a tether. “We’re thirty six. We’re not bickering about my pills.”  
  
“I’m thirty five,” retorts Lukas.  
  
Basti rolls his eyes but he doesn’t say anything. He’s never been great at retaliation, of the verbal variety at least. The knots inside Lukas loosen a little.  
  
-  
  
“Hey,” Basti says when they get into the car, just before Lukas has the chance to turn on the ignition. He reaches across the center console and kisses Lukas in the cold, dead silence.  
  
-  
  
Basti refuses to let Lukas carry his things up to the apartment. He’s retired and tired, yes, he’s run himself ragged, he says like poetry, but he can fucking carry a fucking bag, Lukas.  
  
Lukas lifts his hands up in surrender.  
  
“Okay, Captain,” he says, winks affectionately at Basti’s warning glance. “Are you hungry?”  
  
Basti swings the strap of his duffel over his shoulder. His eyebrows quirk. “Are you going to make something?” he asks, suspicious. “Did some culinary miracle happen since I last saw you?”  
  
Lukas doesn’t see it coming which is maybe why it hits him hard, _since I last saw you_. In Basti’s apartment in Munich, Basti’s arms so tight around him after all his guests had left. He smelled like beer and desperation, felt so hot to the touch. _It’s over_ , he whispered in disbelief into the space between Lukas' shoulder blades, to himself, Lukas knew. Lukas' heart hurt more than it ever had.  
  
“I asked you a question, asshole,” says present-day Basti.  
  
Lukas blinks the memory away. He swings an arm around Basti’s neck and kisses his ear, at which Basti doesn’t bat an eyelash.  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous,” responds Lukas. “I bought frozen waffles. This country is incredible.”  
  
Basti smiles his approval and they’re so bad for each other, Lukas thinks.  
  
“And it put you in that sky blue jersey, too,” adds Basti.  
  
Lukas grins as he fishes the keys to the entry out of his pocket.  
  
“It brings out my eyes, someone said,” he says. “Now if only I could remember who. Hmm, who was it? Who was it?” he taunts playfully, expecting resistance, expecting a denial, adamant and abashed.  
  
Basti laughs out loud and pushes his palm against Lukas' side.  
  
“Me,” he beams, the musical quality of his laughter seeping into his voice. “It was me.”  
  
-  
  
“So, how’ve you spent the last three months without me?” asks Lukas. He pushes Basti down into the couch in the living room, still winter morning dark.  
  
“We text every seventeen minutes. I’m not answering that,” says Basti, eyes big as Lukas straddles his lap.  
  
“Dick,” says Lukas. He kisses him.  
  
“The waffles?” Basti asks even as his hands move to pull Lukas' shirt off.  
  
“My hands missed your skin,” replies Lukas like an excuse, steady and clear.  
  
He can feel the waver in Basti’s breathing and this part isn’t new, it isn't changed. It’s well-traveled. It never gets old.  
  
“Lukas,” Basti breathes and Lukas lets the word trickle into his chest.  
  
-  
  
They take the train downtown just before the sun sets, just after Lukas gets back from training. As the car fills up, Basti pulls Lukas into his chest.  
  
“You’ll score a brace tomorrow, that’s my bet,” he says, confident.  
  
Lukas raises his eyebrows. He tries not to smile but Basti’s conviction has always been an overwhelming force.  
  
“It’s the final. They’re going to be too defensively tight, Basti,” he says, shuffling closer to Basti when a woman’s purse digs into his back.  
  
Basti’s lips ghost over Lukas' cheekbone, not quite touching. His hands aren’t quite as modest. He slips his fingertips into the arch of Lukas' lower back.  
  
“When has that ever stopped you?” he says into Lukas' ear, and this is excessive, Lukas knows. Basti is pushing for something.  
  
“Well,” replies Lukas.  
  
Basti exhales unsteadily against the curve of his ear.  
  
“I really want to kiss you in front of all these people. Can I?”  
  
There it is, thinks Lukas' suddenly racing heart.  
  
He pulls back a bit and looks at Basti’s face, at the hopeful question in his eyes, the uncertainty in the line of his jaw, and remembers the first time. He doesn’t feel any smarter or any more in control now. He doesn’t feel any less reckless. Doesn’t feel any older than he was then, twenty one and small and overcome. But, he thinks, he doesn’t have to wonder (miserably and desperately) why anymore.  
  
“ _I love you_ ,” says Lukas, loudly, just like that. In English. Loud enough for all the people sardined around them to hear.  
  
Basti’s eyes widen. And then he laughs, delighted.  
  
“Sorry, sorry,” he says. “Your English always makes me laugh.”  
  
Lukas frowns, reverts to German, says, “I love you.”  
  
Basti sobers quickly except for his eyes, which still swim with delight when he leans in to kiss Lukas.  
  
-  
  
The lights of the city suit Basti devastatingly. At the plaza, they linger and shimmer in the silver of his hair and highlight the brightness in his eyes as he looks toward Lukas. Isn’t that place a tourist trap, he’d asked Lukas, and Lukas had said yes, of course, we’re going.  
  
They take a picture together with the tree behind them, lean over the railing of the ice rink and take turns commentating the little hockey game going on on the ice. Basti laughs earnestly and shivers against Lukas' shoulder. It’s cold enough for snow, though it doesn’t, which means it’s cold enough for Basti’s scarf to be up over his nose, for him to walk a little gingerly.  
  
Lukas has to curb the urge to try to fix him with his hands and his mouth.  
  
He buys them a couple cones of roasted chestnuts from a street vendor. He has to press one into Basti’s hand and ignore the way Basti rolls his eyes delicately.  
  
“What’s with the Christmas clichés, Lukas?”  
  
“Shut up and eat,” Lukas commands.  
  
-  
  
Basti’s eyes eventually start to glaze over with exhaustion, the overnight flight seeming to catch up with him, so Lukas hauls him back onto the train.  
  
In his radiator-warm bedroom, he crawls into bed after him. He carefully unfastens the straps of his braces, one around each knee, ignoring Basti’s weak protests. He kisses the tired red imprints they left in his skin, stretches up and kisses Basti’s mouth.  
  
They take their time tasting each other. The lack of urgency warms every vein, every artery running under Lukas' skin. It’s so very novel for them, so far from their hurried kisses in an empty dressing room, their hasty nights in shared hotel rooms. Lukas tries to push away the sinking feeling that this may be it, this may be what binds them together, what makes another goodbye impossible.  
  
“I think I’m going to stay here, for Christmas,” he says into the back of Basti’s neck later with a hint of hope, an implicit suggestion. He lets his nose get tickled by the feather soft tips of Basti’s hair, a few inches longer than usual for the winter.  
  
It takes Basti a while to respond. He breathes in unevenly and Lukas knows he’s fighting sleep.  
  
“That isn’t for another two weeks,” says Basti, hazy.  
  
“I know,” says Lukas.  
  
Another few lingering seconds pass.  
  
“What about your family?” asks Basti.  
  
Lukas slides his hand up Basti’s chest and spreads his palm over his lazily beating heart.  
  
He replies, “There isn’t much room for the ex-husband at Christmas dinner.”  
  
The words sound more bitter than he feels about them. Basti doesn’t give any indication that they bother him. He stretches his legs a little and inhales again, more deeply now, under Lukas' hand.  
  
“I guess I could make time in my schedule,” he says, then lets out a breathy laugh when Lukas grins against his skin.  
  
-  
  
Lukas thinks Basti must be a wizard because the next evening he scores two goals, one just before and one just after regulation time, to add to a 1-0 lead.  
  
After the final whistle blows, his teammates sprint across the grass toward each other, toward the stands, spreading over the pitch like a constellation.  
  
Lukas brims with joy as he crawls out from underneath a pile of sweaty teammates. He stands and turns to face the stands behind the bench. He finds Basti almost instantly and they beam at each other from across the space between them, halting the chaos for a few heady moments.  
  
It isn’t until after Lukas has persuaded the stadium security to please let the god damn former captain of the German national team down onto the pitch that he notices what Basti is wearing.  
  
“Podolski?” he asks with a grin, watching Basti jump down from the steps. He’s in a New York City jersey with Lukas' name and number on it.  
  
Basti smiles and launches himself into Lukas' arms.  
  
“What did I say?” he asks, his arms tight around Lukas' neck, his wind-cold cheek pressing into Lukas' ear. “What did I say?”  
  
Lukas laughs openly and tells him to shut up because he’s unbearable when he’s right.  
  
Basti accompanies him to the party afterwards. It doesn’t take much time or much booze, just a couple of beers, before he’s the center of attention. He socializes with every one of Lukas' teammates and every one of them adores him, inevitably. And in that jersey, with Lukas' medal around his neck and that shining grin on his face, he’s a vision of past victories.  
  
Lukas takes a break at the bar as a flimsy excuse to watch him and thinks that he would trade places with him, willingly, that he would give all of this up to give it back to Basti.  
  
The revelation sinks into his stomach with just a hint of surprise and not a trace of terror and he thinks he’s too stupidly head over heels.  
  
-  
  
“You never told me the terms of your bet,” Lukas says against the curve of Basti’s shoulder when he finally has him back home and shirtless and pressed to the wall of the bedroom.  
  
Basti hums happily and threads his fingers through Lukas' hair.  
  
“Basti,” prods Lukas.  
  
“Yeah?” asks Basti, oblivious.  
  
Lukas licks the hollow of his throat, still sticky-sweet from when he got caught in a champagne bath after the trophy presentation, and pushes his hips into the wall, a palm on each hipbone, tells him, “You’re so fucking drunk.”  
  
There’s a slight thudding sound and when Lukas looks up, he sees that Basti’s head has fallen back against the wall.  
  
“I’m—” Basti says, eyes closed. He licks his bottom lip and breathes in. “Lukas, fuck me.”  
  
Lukas tilts Basti’s chin down with his thumb and kisses him until he’s whimpering.  
  
“Lukas, please,” Basti says, his need unrestrained. “Lukas,” he repeats breathlessly and Lukas says yes and drags him to bed before he passes out from the sound of his pleading voice spreading over him like wildfire.  
  
-  
  
“I have contacts,” Basti tells Lukas around a mouthful of what the waitress had called _hash browns_ , an easy shrug rolling off his shoulders. “And money.”  
  
Lukas stares at him from across the table, incredulous. He says, “That’s the best physical therapist in the city. It’s the holidays.”  
  
Basti shrugs again, swallows, then spears another sausage with his fork, bringing it up to his mouth. Lukas tries not to watch with too much interest. Basti has always been a voracious, slightly forceful eater and Lukas' attraction to it has always been inexplicable.  
  
“If I’m going to be staying for a few more weeks I need a rehab schedule,” Basti says.  
  
Lukas knows that, of course he does. Back in Germany, Basti has a whole team of doctors and therapists trying to sew his pieces back together, trying every morning to put together what years of stubborn abuse unraveled. Basti told Lukas, in the mugginess of Paris in the summer, spooned up behind him and on the verge of international retirement, that he would go back and lie about it all over again, all the pain he’d gritted his teeth through to see gold. He had only one regret and it wasn’t related to football, not really, he whispered into Lukas' damp, overheated skin and then pushed inside him, so that the only response Lukas could manage was Basti’s name.  
  
He looks at Basti now, nearly finished with his food and unfazed by Lukas' silence.  
  
“Okay,” is all he can think to say because _do you have any regrets now?_ and _what would you have changed?_ don’t seem like appropriate chain-diner dining room conversations.  
  
Basti glances up.  
  
“You have to drop me off in twenty minutes,” he says. His foot slides between Lukas' under the table. “Stop gazing at me and eat your disgusting dessert.”  
  
“It’s breakfast,” protests Lukas, looking down at his stack of double chocolate pancakes, face warm.  
  
“You have chocolate on your mouth, you overgrown child,” laughs Basti.  
  
Lukas doesn't bother licking it away. He picks up the bottle of chocolate syrup between them and liberally drizzles some all over his meal just to watch Basti wrinkle his nose.  
  
-  
  
They establish a new sort of routine and it breaks and reconstructs Lukas' heart all at once.  
  
In the street outside the rehabilitation center, he waits for Basti.  
  
He leans back against his car, legs folded at the ankles and a coffee cup warming his palms. He watches Basti wend his way over to him from the exit of the building, dressed in head-to-toe Adidas.  
  
“Hey, _fussballgott._ Are they still paying you?” Lukas jokes when Basti is within hearing distance, jokes because he can’t overcome the profound loss he feels when he sees Basti looking like this, so very much the same as he did in Cape Town, in Rio, in Munich.  
  
 _Munich,_ Lukas thinks with an extra ounce of regret.  
  
“You found a gym,” Basti notes after dismissing Lukas’ question with a roll of his eyes. He reaches up to touch Lukas' shower-wet hair.  
  
“Yes,” Lukas says. He swats at Basti’s hand and tries to hold back a smile. “You’re ruining my whole routine,” he adds, referring to needing to find a new gym closer to Basti’s rehab center.  
  
Basti pins Lukas' wayward hand against the side of the car.  
  
“Where’s my coffee?” he demands to know, his voice steely but his fingers threading through Lukas'.  
  
“Hello to you too, _süsser_. How was day five?” Lukas asks, then offers Basti his own coffee cup a little guiltily because despite everything, he somehow can’t seem to remember that he’s buying for two now.  
  
Basti takes a sip, makes a face. He sets the cup on the roof of the car.  
  
“That’s awful,” he says and pins Lukas' other wrist down in the plain light of day. “I did lunges today,” he grins.  
  
Lukas says, “I’m so proud,” like sarcasm. He finds it too upsetting to think that he means it.  
  
-  
  
In the dead of night, he pulls Basti closer and closer, winding his arms around him, half-consciously wondering when he’ll get enough, when his blood will stop pounding so close to the surface of his skin.  
  
-  
  
A week before Christmas, Basti looks around the living room from his supine position on the couch and points out that, what the fuck, Lukas, you don’t have a tree.  
  
They drive out to a massive, overcrowded department store outside the city and don’t realize that neither of them actually cares about Christmas tree shopping until they get there. They spend twenty minutes in the sports section looking at American footballs, another fifteen in the video game aisle.  
  
Lukas catches Basti watching him through the throng of holiday shoppers, eyes hot and hooded, when all Lukas was doing was staring down at the back of a game cover in concentration.  
  
He quirks a teasing eyebrow at Basti and rather than steadily hold his gaze like a younger Basti would have done, did do, this Basti looks away, his face growing flush, and Lukas thinks _huh._  
  
Eventually Basti cracks and asks an attendant to show them where the trees are.  
  
“These are artificial,” he points out grumpily when they get to the section in the back of the store.  
  
“He’s Bavarian,” Lukas explains to the attendant, tossing a football back and forth between his hands. He winks at Basti in response to his bewildered look.  
  
They buy the biggest one they can find because they never really were taught restraint.  
  
“Lukas,” calls Basti, voice alarmed, once they’ve wrestled the box into the apartment and managed to get the fake tree out and upright. Lukas walks back into the living room from the kitchen, a can of soda in each hand.  
  
“What?” he asks.  
  
“We forgot to get ornaments. And lights.”  
  
They stare at each other in astonishment for a few silent seconds, then Basti bursts into beautiful, uncontrolled laughter and Lukas quickly follows.  
  
-  
  
“Are you lonely in New York?” asks a semi-inebriated Basti over the brim of some whiskey concoction, on Christmas Eve, at the bar where Lukas and his few remaining teammates have thrown a holiday-orphan party.  
  
Lukas has to do everything in his power not to turn and press his lips to the line of Basti’s cheekbone, because living and breathing Basti these last few weeks has neatly erased his ability to control himself.  
  
“No,” he replies instead and means it. Lukas’ apartment is stark and his pride and joy in the form of a twelve year old is across the ocean, yes, but here Lukas has football and friends and a city he’s grown to love.  
  
But ask me again after you’ve gone.  
  
-  
  
They stay out late enough that Lukas has to book them a hotel room for the night, that it’s already Christmas by the time they stumble into it.  
  
“Happy Christmas,” Basti murmurs against the seam of Lukas’ lips with a smile, then licks at his mouth until Lukas relents and touches their tongues together. Basti’s hands travel all over Lukas' skin, hot and hungry, and in this bed there’s an uncomfortable edge of how it felt a hundred years ago when all they had was hooking up in random places and ignoring real life.  
  
“Stop frowning,” commands Basti, hands cupping Lukas’ face, lips on his forehead and then between his eyebrows like he’s trying to kiss the creases of Lukas’ apprehension away. “I love you.”  
  
“Don’t say that,” Lukas begs and feels. His fingertips tense against the notches of Basti’s spine.  
  
Basti kisses a line down the side of Lukas' face. He breathes a gentle “why?” into his collarbone and Lukas has to squeeze his eyes closed. He slides his hands up into Basti’s hair, curls his fingers there, tugs at the strands a little.  
  
“I can’t ask you to stay,” he replies.  
  
“Lukas, fuck,” Basti says. He wriggles back up and kisses him, warm and messy. “It’s been sixteen years. Ask me.”  
  
Lukas really should be better prepared for the way his heart hitches at this.  
  
He opens his mouth then closes it, swallows, and thinks about Basti’s life in Munich. Then he thinks about Basti here, how there’s nothing for him here, and here, real and perfect underneath his hands.  
  
“Would you?” he blurts hopefully.  
  
Basti smiles, then laughs, which is another thing Lukas isn’t prepared for. Incredulity really isn’t the emotion he was aiming for.  
  
He frowns.  
  
“No, no, don’t start pouting again, please,” says Basti on a gasping laugh.  
  
“Basti,” Lukas implores.  
  
He rolls them over so that he’s hovering over Basti. It took him _sixteen years_ , as Basti helpfully pointed out, and this is the response he gets.  
  
“You did this on the train, too,” he complains, “I’m never telling you anything.”  
  
 _“Lukas,_ fuck, how are you so stupid?” Basti asks, and just as Lukas starts to change his mind about keeping him around, he tugs him closer and says, “I’d do anything for you.”  
  
-  
  
They don’t get much sleep after that, until the sun begins to fill the sky with a hazy blue light, and then they do.  
  
They sleep well into the day and when they wake up again, Basti grumbles about missing Christmas and Lukas exasperatedly promises him that his presents are safe and sound back at the apartment.  
  
“Well, let’s get home then,” Basti mumbles into his pillow, voice sleep-raspy. “This bed is terrible anyway.”  
  
“Home,” repeats Lukas, slightly reverently, into Basti’s back, right underneath his shoulder blade. He presses his lips there and listens to the way Basti inhales and feels the way his heart pounds inside his ribcage.   
  
For the first time, he doesn't try to memorize it.


End file.
